Is it possible to recover files from deleted disk?

Hi guys,

My name is Ivan. This is my first post here and I hope I will enjoy this forum.

However right now I'm in big trouble. My brother decided to install some linux distro
on the laptop that we both use. He decided me without asking if I have some important
info there. He told me that he wanted to make a dual boot system (I'm not fully aware how it works)
and he said that he did it before, but now just erased my whole disk by mistake.

I thought that this is some bad joke, but when I checked (I gave the laptop to friend of mine who run live some software to show partitions) the whole disk was emty except some folders of the new OS.

I cant describe how I feel right now. Is there a way something to be saved? He told me that he shuted down the system on the moment he realized what was going on and not even 1% of the new OS was instilled. But the fact is that there is nothing anymore...

Please help guys!
Thanks in advance!

Changing to a version of Linux usually formats the drive differently from Windows and recovery may no longer be possible. Shutting down a partial install usually has done the formatting before copying files so again, there may be nothing possible. This may have some help:
Data recovery from accidentally deleted files or crashed drives in Redhat, CentOS and Fedora Linux | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

I bought active at partition recovery pro. The most important thing is to not use the drive any further (in linux). You need to take the hard drive out and slave it to another pc with windows (need adaptor). Then run the program that you choose. If it cannot restore the partition, at least you can most likely find the data and recover it. Or, it looks like their newer version operates within the windows PE environment, so you could start the laptop with a win7 disk. I imagine you must make a disk on another PC for the recovery program, and switch out disks to run it once in windows PE recovery environment, or the program has the PE environment built in, and you have to burn a boot iso on another pc 1st.


http://www.partition-recovery.com/

I just wonder how it is possible the whole disk to be gone when he told me that when he pressed "erase all and install ubuntu" and not " do something else" and chose a free partition it just took a second or two befer he went on the next step for "location" and than he pressed shutdown button.

He told me that the system did not even showed some progress of installation..